Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (117874)	12/19/2000 6:35:55 PM
From: mst2000	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

You are making my point for me. I agree -- had the S. Ct. found in favor of Gore, the recounts would have continued under a uniform "standard". If Bush won after that, his presidency would be totally legitimate, despite his loss of the national popular vote, because those are the rules of the electoral college game. Instead, we will never know (actually, we will have a pretty good idea once the news media finishes its post hoc recount, but that may only serve to illegitimize Bush even further). As for your claim that the FSC botched what the Florida legislature did, if you read their opinion, you will find that the FSC did exactly what the statute said it should do -- Florida statute (not the judges) said that it is impermissible to ignore any ballot that reflects the "clear intent of the voter" -- a standard in effect in 33 states, incidentally, that typically comes into play only when a voter does not mark the ballot perfectly. And the statute further says that a contest will be upheld when sufficient challenged ballots are presented to either reverse the outcome of an election or put the outcome in doubt. Sauls read the second part of that out of the statute. And, finally, the statute did NOT require Gore to seek a recount statewide -- it specifically calls for manual recounts on a county by county basis. Sauls applied the wrong standard (he said Gore had to show as a threshold matter that the ballots presented were reasonably likely to reverse the outcome of the election, which is NOT the statutory standard, and then he refused to look and see if that were the case by a mere examination of the best evidence presented -- the ballots themselves). 6 of 7 FSC justices agreed that these were reversible errors by Sauls -- 2 of the 6 declined to reverse, however, because they too felt that there was insufficient time to unscramble the eggs left by the Florida legislature and still qualify for the Federal safe harbor (the artifical deadline). The ordering of a statewide recount was made to protect Bush and to meet an equal protection concern that all 7 FSC justices shared. Be that as it may, it is the exclusive province of the FSC to interpret state law, not the US S. Ct. and not legislatures who did not enact the original statute. If you disagree with the FSC majority (as Wells did, for example, in an opinion that the other 2 dissenters did not agree with and could not join, but which the conservative bloc of the US S. Ct. quoted more than the FSC majority decision), that is your prerogative, but it is still the law of Florida as interpreted by its highest court (and continues to be so, by the way, in all contexts other than a presidential election -- in light of the majority ruling of SCOTUS that its decision in Bush v. Gore was strictly limited to the facts of that case). In essence, SCOTUS ruled that the equal protection concerns that they raised do not apply to any election other than a presidential election (admitting as they did so that such concerns create a slippery slope of problems -- such as the fact that different jurisdictions use different voting equipment that involve inequal error rates, etc.), but that, even in the context of the closest presidential election ever decided (and the only presidential election ever decided by the courts), they were obliged to ignore the equal protection issues raised by not even looking once at "undervotes" in Miami/Dade County, which were statistically over 5 times as high as the undervotes in every county which did not use punch ballot (Votamatic) machines. And all this with a straight face. As I have said, Bush ultimately won Florida by one vote - a 5-4 vote in the Supreme Court. And we as a nation are diminished by that fact.